State Legislative Development: Observations from Three Perspectives

Abstract

Political scientists have viewed modern state legislatures from three perspectives: legislative reform in the 1960s and 1970s, legislative professionalization in the 1980s, and most recently legislative institutionalization. Institutionalization is best indicated by the boundedness of the legislature from the environment, as specified by personnel differentiation, normative structure, and managerial autonomy. When various indicators are taken into account, legislatures appear to be moving in the direction of deinstitutionalization.